


Sleep, Evil Sleep (It's All Just In My Head)

by CranberryBridge



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Atypical Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Jon Has A Cane, Jon's Trans, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Worm Attack, SOME ACTUAL COMMUNICATION???, Season 3-5 Foreshadowing, Set In Mid Season 2, Sleep Paralysis, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:47:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26927620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CranberryBridge/pseuds/CranberryBridge
Summary: Martin waved his hand in front of Jon’s face hesitantly, then snapped his fingers in an attempt to startle him. When neither of these seemed to cause any change, he stood back, frowning. What should he do? He didn’t think that he should just leave Jon like this, but at the same time, they did say waking people up from sleepwalking was bad, but this wasn’t sleepwalking, so—But he no longer had to worry, because with a gasp, Jon shot up into a seated position, eyes darting around wildly.“M—Martin?”////ORJon experiences sleep paralysis after falling asleep at his desk and Martin discovers him.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 8
Kudos: 220





	Sleep, Evil Sleep (It's All Just In My Head)

**Author's Note:**

> hey, i cut a bit out from this after a comment i got, tell me if the flow is off!
> 
> panic attack and sleep paralysis parts are based off mine and a friend's experience

It was probably strange to admit, but Martin had long ago realized he was fond of making tea for others, and enjoyed the ritual behind each cup. Everything about it soothed him; remembering the type of tea, the exact amount of milk, sugar, or honey, all to show that he cared. The routine of it as well, the familiarity of it all, was grounding and left him with a sense of contentment he privately hoped his tea would bring to others.

  
Sasha and Tim had both left on time a few hours earlier, hustling out the door as the clock struck five. They'd briefly tried to convince Martin to leave with them, but he'd shook his head, citing some follow-up he still had to do as an excuse, and how Jon would be pleased if it was finished. 

Tim, of course, had rolled his eyes at the mention of Jon, as well as at Martin's ever-persistent urge to please him, but said nothing otherwise. So now he was sitting here, alone in the office, probably alone in the building, apart from Jon. Maybe Elias was still around. He didn't seem the workaholic type, but Martin hadn't seen him leave that evening either.

The little kitchenette in the breakroom needed its light bulbs replaced. They were flickering madly as Martin carefully took the electric kettle off its base when it began to boil. Opening the cupboard doors, he grabbed two mugs, one plain white mug for himself, and another that had long ago been christened as Jon’s Mug. 

Jon’s mug of choice was small, holding perhaps twelve ounces, with a brown body and tan drip glaze. The handle itself wasn’t much of a handle at all, more of a simple loop one could fit a finger through, with the remaining fingers pressed against the side of the ceramic body. 

On the rare occasions that Jon made tea for himself, before Martin had taken over the job, he’d always reached for this particular mug first. It was peculiar, and a little sweet, and Martin had done his best to not think of the act as absolutely _adorable_.

Martin dropped a tea bag into the mug — Earl Grey, after numerous trials in an attempt to determine Jon’s taste — and turned to open the small fridge in the break room, taking out a bottle of milk as well as a glass jar of sugar cubes. Sasha had insisted that they keep the sugar in the fridge, reasoning that they wouldn’t want an ant infestation in the archives. She used to always comment on it before the Prentiss attack. Now, though, it was never brought up. He assumed it was due to the rather priority-resetting nature of a threat to one’s life. Martin kept it in the fridge out of habit now…  
  
As Martin prepared the tea, he pondered the sheer ridiculousness of Jon, possibly the grumpiest, most stuffy and pretentious man he had ever crossed paths with, taking tea that looked as though it had been drowned in milk to the point where it was a light tan color, and with four — _four_ — sugar cubes on top of that. Though, perhaps it was an indicator of Jon’s true colors. He wasn’t sure.

* * *

The hallway leading to Jon’s office was darkened, and the strip of light streaming out from the crack beneath his door seemed dimmer than usual. Perhaps he’d shut off the overhead fluorescents, and turned on a lamp to avoid straining his eyes so late at night? It didn’t seem likely, what with Jon’s lack of ability to do anything remotely similar to self care, no matter how much Martin insisted. More plausibly, Jon always had the lights dimmed in there, and Martin had just never noticed due to the brighter fluorescent lights that always streamed in from the hallways when he entered.  
  
Martin knocked twice and, receiving no response, turned the doorknob to peek inside. Through the crack in the door, he saw Jon sitting at his desk, head down and resting on his forearms. Was he… asleep?

  
It looked as though he'd merely dozed off, and Martin crept inside to place the mug of steaming tea on a nearby filing cabinet, for fear that Jon may knock the cup right over when he woke. In the beginning, he'd tried to set the cups of tea between the stacks of files and statements all over Jon's desk, but had been lectured loudly and harshly about the proper care of official documents. This happened often enough that Martin had given up on approaching Jon's desk, and just set the tea on whatever surface around the office happened to be available within Jon’s reach.

As Martin approached, closer inspection showed him that Jon's breathing seemed a bit erratic— panicked, almost. With how Jon had been acting lately, paranoid and gruff, jumping at his own shadow, Martin wouldn't have been surprised if he were having some sort of anxiety attack. But then why was he in a position that looked like he was trying to take a nap? An attempt to settle himself, calm down?  
  
He took another step closer, bending down and craning his neck to get a better look at Jon’s face. All in the name of checking on him, of course, not anything _weird_. To his surprise, however, Jon’s eyes were half open, and his stare was glassy, tired, fixed on a point somewhere in the distance. He looked like he was in some sort of daze, but a panicked one, muted fear on his scarred face.

Martin waved his hand in front of Jon’s face hesitantly, then snapped his fingers in an attempt to startle him. When neither of these seemed to cause any change, he stood back, frowning. What should he do? He didn’t think that he should just leave Jon like this, but at the same time, they did say waking people up from sleepwalking was bad, but this wasn’t sleepwalking, so—

But he no longer had to worry, because with a gasp, Jon shot up into a seated position, eyes darting around wildly. 

“M—Martin?”

* * *

  
  


The last thing Jon remembered was falling asleep for a moment, telling himself that he would just take a quick nap before getting back to work. He tried to open his eyes, but they wouldn’t work properly, cracking open the slightest amount to give him a hazy view of his office. It took him a moment to notice that he was frozen in place.  
  
Any attempts to move, from shifting his legs to twitching his fingers, was met with no response from his body. He felt like— it felt like someone was pushing on him, pinning him to his desk, like there were hands and people all over him, pressing down gently but forcefully so that he was paralyzed. When he tried harder to sit up, straining to make his worthless body do something, the pressure only intensified. His mouth was useless as well, he couldn’t even move his lips or tongue to call out for help, and who knew what time it was, really? All he could move were his eyes, both of which were staring at the limited space visible from the position he’d fallen asleep in.

  
As his vision narrowed in on the corner of the room near his desk, Jon noticed them. Strange, shadowy outlines of what looked to be people, but deformed, only humanoid in the vaguest sense of the word. When he squinted harder, the blurry shapes began to smooth out, reform into faces and bodies that seemed to be… his coworkers? Martin, Sasha, Elias, and Tim were all lined up next to each other. But something was wrong. The more he stared, the more their appearances shifted and morphed, twisting into frightening and eerie caricatures of themselves.  
  


Jon felt his chest begin to heave as his heart pounded furiously, and he could do nothing but stare at their decaying new forms. He focused on Elias as the man seemed to… Well, he didn’t walk, exactly, nothing but his eyes moved as he seemed to close in on Jon, towering above him. The pin Elias always wore on his lapel, which Jon had assumed to be a reference to the company’s logo, a simplistic, stylized eye-like shape, seemed to almost blink as he stared blankly down at Jon.

  
In a desperate attempt to look away, to avoid making eye contact with the thing, Jon’s gaze fell to Sasha. Her skin was… bubbling? It rippled and warped, shifting colors in a dizzying array of shades that left him mildly queasy. Everything about her seemed distinctly wrong, but it was difficult to pinpoint it precisely, or really put words to the wrongness at all. What was happening to her was horrible, yes, but what was worse was that every different iteration of her, no matter how bizarrely unlike, looked _exactly_ like Sasha.

Bright, flashing red filled the corner of his vision, and his gaze was ripped away from Sasha’s ever-changing form, and over to Tim. He couldn’t make out what he was holding but it was definitely emitting the blinking light. He didn’t move like Elias or Sasha did, his appearance and pose stayed consistent… but Tim’s gaze never left what he was holding onto. He had no emotion in his face, aside from a distinctly… defeated look in his eyes.  
  


A swirl of smoke, fog, perhaps, seemed to engulf both of the other archival assistants and Jon’s gaze shifted one more to the final silhouette, Martin.

Fog rolled off him in waves, thin tendrils of smoke curling in the air, and growing into thick clouds of mist that filled the office, drowned out everyone else until there was nothing but the fog, and the barely-visible silhouette of Martin in the middle of it. Jon thought he could smell the faint scent of sea salt, and heard the sound of waves lapping gently against the shore. As he continued to watch, frozen, the fog began to clear from Martin’s face, revealing that he seemed to be— crying? But the tears that flowed from his eyes weren’t liquid, and he stared in muted horror as he watched tiny black spiders gush out of Martin’s tear ducts, crawling all across his face and into his mouth through parted lips.  
  
A few stray spiders had scuttered onto the floor, twisting and morphing into much, much bigger creatures than they had been. They neared closer, and just as he felt one begin to crawl up his back, he finally blinked.

* * *

"Are— Jon, are you alright?" Martin asked, his voice hushed as he watched Jon cautiously. The man's chest was still rapidly rising and falling with his quick, panting breaths. He was staring at Martin like he'd seen a ghost…  
  
Jon took a moment to respond in a desperate attempt to compose himself. "I— I'm perfectly fine," he said, as though trying to convince himself of the fact rather than Martin. Clearly, his attempt had been entirely futile when his eyes began to fill with tears, a few spilling out of the corners of his eyes and down his face, "It… It's late, Martin, you should go home…"

  
His chest tightened painfully, just as it had when he'd been petrified, fixed in place and pinned like a butterfly in a glass case, lying on his desk uselessly while terrible, nightmarish figures of his boss and coworkers paraded past. Jon squeezed his eyes shut, pushing himself up into a stand. He willed himself not to think, because he did _not_ want Martin to see him break down here and now.  
  
The tension in his ribs worsened as he felt his breath hitch. Martin watched him in concern as he stepped forwards, slowly and carefully, as if he were trying to be predictable to keep Jon from scuttering away like a frightened deer. His voice was soft and coaxing. 

“I’m going to let you take my hand, alright, Jon? Then we’ll walk out to the break room and you can sit on the sofa for a little while…?” He held out his hand for Jon to take it, just as he’d said he would. Jon elected not to say anything as he took the other’s hand for fear of causing even more of a scene than this already was in the first place. Crying after having a nightmare in the office, god, he was ridiculous.

Holding back hiccupping sobs and, as a result, his breath, Jon followed as Martin led him down the hall and into the break room. How late was it now, how long had he lost to the paralysis? It was so dark in the hallways, the only lights being the dim lamplight from his own office, and the flickering bulbs in the breakroom.

  
Martin guided him to the sofa, indicating that he should sit down. When they were both seated, Jon watched the frown he’d been waiting for appear on Martin’s face.  
  
“Jon— you can’t hold your breath like this, come on, breathe for me,” he said quietly, prompting Jon to suck in a sudden, quick breath, before he went right back to holding it.

  
“You’re only making it worse, really— I’ve… I’ve had panic attacks before, Jon, if you need to cry, you can. It’s alright to cry—” 

  
“Can’t you just—” Jon pushed himself to a stand, wobbling slightly on his feet. His legs felt like they would give out any minute, and it occurred to him that likely only Martin’s help had gotten him down the hall, especially without his cane. He grasped at the edge of the nearby counter, and gasped out, “—Just let me be?”

  
Martin rose with him, reaching out to steady Jon’s shaking body. “Jon, you’re— you’re hyperventilating and look like you’re about to collapse, and I _just_ watched you wake up from some sort of… nightmare— and now you’re having a panic attack!” He touched Jon’s elbow lightly, steadying him as if he feared that Jon would completely collapse. “Why on earth would anyone just ‘let you be’ after seeing that?”

  
“I— You’ll tell the others! Tell them I— Tell them I fell asleep then started _fucking_ crying when I woke up because of some damn nightmare, and then they’ll hate me more than I know they already do, and I really can’t handle that right now— I just... I can’t.”

  
There was a pause, while Jon swayed dizzily on his feet. Then Martin spoke, his voice still quiet and calm. “Jon… Why would I ever _gossip_ about you? I wouldn’t— there’s no reason for me to do that, you had a nightmare, it happens when you’re stressed, and you’ve been so stressed lately, and nightmares are just—” He broke off momentarily, biting his lip. “Well, I’ve had some that left me crying before, it’s normal. It’s trauma,” he said softly. “It’s trauma, and you’ve gone through a lot, and I would never hurt you by using that against you.”  
  
The hand on Jon’s elbow moved to carefully guide him back to the sofa. “Here, sit down before you fall over,” Martin murmured, and Jon didn’t argue this time. His knees still felt like they would buckle out from under him.

  
Jon tore his gaze away from Martin after he’d sat down once more. “I’m not traumatized.”

  
“As someone who watched you try to come to work wrapped in blood-stained bandages like a mummy, I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” Martin replied mildly, sitting down next to him. “Do you want to talk about it? The dream, I mean, not the bloody bandages. Well— if you like you can talk about that too.” 

  
“I… the dream itself, it wasn’t anything memorable. But I just— I felt like I was awake, but I couldn’t move? There was just so much pressure, like someone was just… pushing on my back, I felt so _trapped—”_ Jon leaned back against the cushion, pulling his legs up to hug his knees to his chest like a child. 

  
“...I think I’ve heard of that before,” Martin said after a moment of consideration, making sure to keep his voice soft. He’d heard of it in a book he’d read once, but wasn’t sure how true it was. Maybe it had to do with the lack of sleep Jon got? After all, he would be wholly surprised if the man got three hours a night, even before this paranoia had settled into him, and he’d started acting like he was about to be stabbed at any moment. Could stress have something to do with it as well?  
  


"I've heard of… Things like it, sleep paralysis, but only in… passing. Never thought it would be something I'd ever… Feel. It was..." He hesitated, but finished with, "Awful. It was absolutely awful..." Jon ducked his head, breathing out slowly. He hugged his legs tighter, very deliberately not looking at Martin.

  
"I… I should really get going, it's— good lord, it's nearly eleven o'clock," Jon mumbled after a brief glance at his wristwatch. 

  
Martin nodded for a second, gears furiously whirring in his brain, before deciding he'd already overstepped so many boundaries tonight, so what was one more, in the grand scheme of things? "Maybe I can walk you back?" he asked quickly, the words spilling out of his mouth at the familiar, anxious pace they usually did. "Get on the tube and make sure you get home alright and all? I've been sitting all day, it'd be nice to get a bit of fresh air."

  
"I— I think I would… I would like that," Jon murmured, before moving to attempt standing. Martin held out an arm in front of him.

  
"No, no, wait a moment, I'll get your bag and your cane, alright?" Martin didn't bother to give him the opportunity to protest as he stood, and walked right out of the break room to fetch Jon's things. "Stay put," he called over his shoulder.

  
As he found his way back to Jon's office, Martin found his bag, a leather satchel hanging on the hook behind his door, and the cane leaned up against the wall by his desk. Grabbing both with one hand, he picked up the now-cold mug of tea with his free hand and walked back out, using his hips to bump the door shut.

  
He hurried back, or walked as quickly as he could without spilling the mug of sugary cold tea all over the wood flooring of the Institute hallways.

  
After bumping the other door open, he set the bag in the sofa and held the cane out to Jon, who sighed, "Martin, I really could have—"

  
"You had to grab onto the counter barely half an hour ago to keep yourself standing, I wasn't going to let you walk down the hallways and carry three things back. It's alright Jon, really. It's not that I think you're helpless. You just deserve this," Martin said, leaving no room for argument as he stepped over to the sink and briefly rinsed out the mug. He turned back to look at Jon, who now stood with his bag slung over his shoulder and his cane in his left hand.

  
“You don’t need to grab anything?” Jon asked as he looked at Martin.  
  
“No, I don’t really bring a bag like any of you do, I never really have much to take home since I linger for an extra hour or so now. Are you steady enough to go?”  
  
“Yes— Well, as steady as I’ll get, I think…”  
  
Martin tried to offer Jon a smile of reassurance, although he worried that it had come out differently than he'd hoped for it to be interpreted. How differently one could have misunderstood his smile, he didn't know.

  
"Alright, we'll take the lift then." Martin hummed as he began leading the way down the hall and towards the doors of the lift. He made sure to keep pace with Jon, as he had so many times before, and pressed the Up button when he inevitably arrived first at the panel.

  
It was quick to arrive, since the building should've been deserted at this time of the night. They were equally as quick to enter the small, wood-panelled lift, Jon's cane tapping quickly beside him as he walked in behind Martin. He pressed the button for the main floor, and they both let out quiet sighs of relief, glad to be away from their stuffy basement of a workplace.

  
As he led Jon through the lounge and out the main doors, onto the paved sidewalk, Martin couldn't help but hope that Jon would keep his walls down, or at the very least leave a door open for Martin to come through. To once again talk to him, be close, reassure him and help Jon try to figure out how to cope with that paranoia-addled brain of his…

  
Martin wanted to help Jon, more than anything. And he was going to try his damn hardest to do just that.

**Author's Note:**

> and then martin fucked off into the lonely and jon fucked off into a coma


End file.
